Vietnam: Nokia started building facility.

WorldWide Tech & Science. Francisco De Jesús. 

Vietnam: Nokia started building facility.

Nokia has started the construction of a manufacturing facility in Vietnam, with plans to have it up and running by early 2013. 

The company held an official ceremony attended by Vietnamese dignitaries at the Vietnam-Singapore Industrial Park in Bac Ninh province to mark the start of the development of the 17-hectare site.


Press Release:

   Published April 23, 2012 | By Nokia - Press Release

Nokia officially starts the development of its manufacturing facility in Vietnam


Reaffirming long-term commitment to the country and the company's strategy to connect the next billion to information and the Internet


Bac Ninh, Vietnam - In an official ceremony today, Nokia kicked-off the development of its manufacturing facility in Vietnam, to serve the growing demand for mobile phones all over the world. The event featured Secretary of the Central Party Committee, Vice President of the National Assembly of Vietnam, Madam Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan; Minister of the Ministry of Science and Technology Vietnam, Mr. Nguyen Quan; Ambassador of Finland to Vietnam, Kimmo Lähdevirta; and high ranking officials from Central authorities and Bac Ninh province amongst more than 200 others.


Located in Vietnam-Singapore Industrial Park (VSIP) in Bac Ninh province, the Nokia Vietnam manufacturing facility is being developed on an area of 17 hectares. Nokia expects to start the operations of this factory in early 2013.


Today's event is one step further in reaffirming Nokia's long term commitment to the Vietnam market, under Nokia's strategy to connect the next billion people to information and the Internet.


Nokia's position in high growth economies is strong, and mobile phones play a strategic role. The new manufacturing site is being established to meet the growth in demand for these phones, as well as to help Nokia to deliver a contemporary mobile experience to the next billion consumers all over the world.


"We highly appreciate Nokia's efforts in making this commitment a reality, which contributes to the growth of foreign investment in Vietnam in general and in Bac Ninh in particular. We also hope this will bring up not only economic value, but also other social benefits for the country like job creation and community knowledge enhancement on information technology alike," said Mr. Nguyen Nhân Chien, President of People's Committee of Bac Ninh province.


Mary McDowell, Executive Vice President, Mobile Phones, Nokia, said: "Thanks to the valued support from the Vietnamese government, our manufacturing program in Vietnam has been progressing well. The new Nokia manufacturing plant will produce and provide new devices for compelling and affordable, localized mobile experiences, particularly in the growth markets.


"Nokia is also committed to extending our positive reputation as an employer and as a corporate citizen. We expect to attract competent and energetic employees from the local skilled labor force. And in turn, employees at our new factory can expect a state-of-the-art facility and a positive, modern working environment with high professional and ethical standards," continued McDowell.


Nokia is making progress in its strategy to connect the next billion. The company has launched an aspirational portfolio of devices that include fresh, contemporary design and form factors that are optimized for great experiences, such as social, entertainment, and messaging, and services that extend the value proposition to consumers.


Nokia first opened its doors in Vietnam in 1996 and, like many successful multinationals, saw Vietnam as a growing market with opportunity and potential. In light of the respect Nokia has wherever it operates, the company has worked hard to quickly become part of the Vietnamese community.


Nokia currently operates two representative offices in Vietnam: one in Ho Chi Minh City and the other in Hanoi. These offices carry out marketing and promotion activities for Nokia's handset business. In 2011, Nokia established a branch office in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, increasing its footprint within the IndoChina region.


In November, 2011, Nokia established a new company, Nokia (Vietnam) LLC, to build and operate the new Vietnam manufacturing facility.

Vietnam's Social Media Landscape

“A lot of brands jumped in and said, ‘I need a Facebook, I need a MySpace, I need to do SEO, I need to share all of my content everywhere.” But often it’s lacked of a brand tone of voice. And it’s just created some form of presence that’s not based on strategy at all”, said Daniel King, director of digital, JWT Melbourne. In the emerging markets, which are quite young in onine marketing, the moves might be even slower and lots more problems exist. Vietnam is one of thess cases.

Vietnam has a large population (13th in the world) and half of the country is under 30. The young active Vietnamese are all over the Internet. They’re watching videos, listening to music and reading random news. They’re spending and they’re talking. But there’s little connection that companies here want to cement between those two actions. You could say Vietnamese Internet usage is almost caught up with the world. If the US and Europe are in 2011, then they are in 2008 or 2009. Yet Vietnamese online advertising is still 2002. 

1. Deny acknowledging the trend and taking the lead.

The biggest problem in Vietnam is not that brands or companies are incapable of understanding the fact of the increasing online media power. It’s just that they don’t need to. Understanding online and social media is acknowledging that online could propel an existing brand to greater heights, or it could take a nothing product to become the new star. And though there’s incredible opportunity online because no one is really strong here, no one really wants to consider what that means. 

2. Lack of knowledge 

The second problem is the proper understanding of online media landscape with its current trends and insights in order to furnish the brand strategy and motivate the business to find a real effective communication channel with the target audience with less competition and more cost-effectiveness. Many businesses in Vietnam do not fully understand how social media works and how they could use these channels effectively to benefit their brands and companies. Many marketers or managers in Vietnam may ask you what Twitter is.

3. Lack of attention to detail

Another problem is the lack of attention to detail indicate attitude of most of Vietnamese businesses when go online, especially in customer service. If social media is anything, its core is at customer service. If customer service is not important, then social media cannot be important either.

4. Lack of strategy

Although the rising power of social media, SEM and mobile services, is obvious in all over the world and rising strongly in Vietnam, most of Vietnamese businesses still got very simple reactions when going online, just like the age before social media:

“Let’s put up banners and count the impressions”

“Let’s make a microsite, spend a ton of money to fuel registrations and gather personal data, and then what we’ll do is never use that data and never follow-up. And we can do this all over again next year too.”

Traditional media channels, such as TV, print, radio, outdoor, have been here for ages and intensively competed. But online is completely open, waiting for someone to think and innovate. If you can dominate in this, you could just completely take over – no one else is here or cares. Or they just not care enough to take the lead.

Should Marketers Do Social Marketing in Vietnam?

As somebody may know, I’m a Vietnamese living in Singapore. So sharing my understanding about social media in Vietnam is something I enjoy to do. This article is writing based on reliable research and reports on Vietnam online consumption behavior and digital landscape, and certainly my personal insights and experience. 

“Social Media is like teen sex. Everyone wants to do it. Nobody knows how. When it's finally done there is surprise it's not better.” says Avinash Kaushik at Google. Coincidentally, this is quite matched to the situation in Vietnam, where social media is emerging and businesses are seeking opportunities online. To understand more, there are 5 main points to mention in the large picture of Vietnam social media landscape.

1. Who are online in Vietnam?

Vietnam internet population is very young with 76% from 15-34 and they spend a lot of time online and enjoy the increasing high-speed connection. It makes Vietnam the fastest growth in internet penetration, outweighing other neighbours like Thailand or Philippines. 50% of urban Vietnam is regularly online - even more in Hanoi. If you live in urban Vietnam and do not access the internet, you are fast becoming the minority.

2. What are they doing?

According to Cimigo's recent report of Vietnam NetCitizens , main online activities of Vietnam online users are:

• Gathering information. Reading news and using search sites are the most common activities online. Google is the most widely used website in Vietnam. Online newspapers are also in top-visited websites


• Online entertainment. Online music, movies and gaming are most popular. Zing, the integrated entertainment and networks website, shows the second largest penetration in Vietnam. 


• Online communications. Communications is a further key activity on the internet. The most frequent usage is chatting and emailing. SMS online and instant messaging are coming next.


• Blogging and social networks. Social network become familiar with Vietnam online users with the blogging trend. The need of interaction and networking increases significantly


• Online business. Although there is an increase in online business activities, Vietnam online commerce has not been highly developed yet. The payment system is still weak and the threat of illegal payment is quite high.

3. How’s the social media landscape?

As Vietnam has only had internet access since 1997, social media in Vietnam is relatively young; however, it has been growing rapidly for the past one decade. Some popular social media platforms includes:

• Social networks. Self-expression demand in Vietnam is very high. In the past, social networking in VN just means “blogging”. While the world was eyeing on bloggers.com and wordpress.com, in Vietnam, Yahoo!360 ruled with more than 2 million users. It was not a tool specifically designed for the Vietnam market, but the market took it anyway, with great passion and enthusiasm. Since it closed in July 2009, Facebook becomes the fastest growing market in Vietnam. Local social networks also grow significantly.


• 


• Photo-sharing sites. Most of popular photo sharing sites in Vietnam are forum based with online gallery. The community used to focus more on professional photographers but now it opens to everyone who is interested in photography. And Flickr is the largest and most popular photo-sharing community in Vietnam


• Video-sharing sites. There are two popular video-sharing sites in Vietnam, YouTube and Clip.vn. However YouTube shows more advantages with better speed,great navigational and usability, reasonable advertising and huge community, while Clip.vn has slow speed, too many banners, weak usability and can not expand community. Therefore, YouTube is leading in video-sharing in Vietnam with fast growing community


• Music sharing sites. Popular sites are Yeuamnhac.com, Nhacso.com, Zing MP3. However, majority of users just visit, listen and download music without community interaction


• Career network sites. These websites, such as Cyvee.com or Caravat.com, are for sharing resumes and discussing about career and recruitment trend.


• Integrated-service sites. These “all in one” websites,mostly locally designed, such as Zing.vn or Zume.vn, offer everything from blogs, news, videos, music to photos. 


• Forums. Forum seeding is still very effective in Vietnam. Popular forums are Webtretho.com, Otosaigon.com, TinhTe.com, Hihihehe.com, DDTH.com and GameVN.net. 

The recent disappear of some popular social networking sites such as Facebook due to government censorship has raised another issue in Vietnam social media situation. It pushed Facebook’s users in Vietnam looking for “black” tips to access to the site. Before that, the government mostly blocks pornographic and political websites, which are against the culture and the government. But this recent censorship on social network sites for invisible reasons is not widely supported by online users.

4. Why doing social marketing in Vietnam?

• Decreasing traditional media. It is undeniable that TV and Print still dominate in Vietnam but they are losing their attention and all decrease for a “new kid on the block”, online marketing, which is more effective and cost-saving in the current economy situation. The size of the online advertising market in 2009 is estimated at VND 278 billion VND (approx. USD 15.5 million)


• High penetration rate. Internet user in Vietnam is expanding with “miraculous” speed with 66% home penetration in 4 key cities in Vietnam.


• Targeted. Social media provide chance to reach the “right” target, especially young audience. 


• Easy to measure and tracking. With the provided tools and programs designed for social marketing, it is easier to measure the effectiveness.

5. How to apply into practice?

• Follow the users. Marketers should understand and use what they are using. Interacting with them on Facebook, Blog, RSS, Twitter, Flickr , YouTube , Newsletter and Forums reasonably and wisely should be considered


• Increase traffic by quality. In order to maximize your traffic, microsite is still ideal for short or seasonal campaign. However, in long terms, marketers should ignore “quantity” and go more for “quality”. A well-designed strategy from the beginning including SEO, SEM, E-mail marketing, E-PR still an effective way to drive traffic.


• Have an umbrella. Nobody remember tons of micro-sites everyday. Therefore, building and maintaining the corporate website together with your micro-site campaign is crucial. Having brand account on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, etc. is necessary.


• Measure, measure and measure. Marketers should use social marketing statistics, tools and program, such as Google Analytics, traffic tracking, site ranking, conversion rate, etc. to analyze and measure the effectiveness of their online marketing plan.


• Connect with offline activities. In Vietnam, social media is not everything. Lots of people are online, but also lots of people are still out there. Social media is just wings for tiger, it’s not replace everything

Overall, there are a lot of opportunities in Vietnam with 25 millions of online population. Young people become more and more familiar with social media. Many online emerging trends have been established in a fast pace. Vietnam online advertising spend continually reaches new highs. So the opportunity is here but the challenge is also here. The decisions are all in hand of marketers.

(Sources: Cimigo’s Vietnam NetCitizens report, Vietnam digital landcape by Mr. Hieu Nguyen)